With the advent of more robust wireless communications systems, compatible handheld communication devices are becoming more prevalent, as well as advanced. Where in the past such handheld devices typically accommodated either voice (cell phones) or text transmission (pagers and PDAs), today's consumer often demands a combination device capable of performing both types of transmissions, including sending and receiving e-mail. The suppliers of such mobile communication devices and underlying service providers are anxious to meet these demands, but the combination of voice and textual messaging, as well as other functionalities such as those found in PDAs, have caused designers to have to improve the means by which information is input into the devices by the user, as well as provide better facilitation for the user to navigate within the menus and icon presentations necessary for efficient user interface with these more complicated devices.
For many reasons, screen icons are often utilized in such handheld communication devices as a way to allow users to make feature and/or function selections. Among other reasons, users are accustomed to such icon representations for function selection. A prime example is the personal computer “desktop” presented by Microsoft's Windows® operating system. Because of the penetration of such programs into the user markets, most electronics users are familiar with what has basically become a convention of icon-based functionality selections. Even with many icons presented on a personal computer's “desktop”, however, user navigation and selection among the different icons is easily accomplished utilizing a conventional mouse and employing the point-and-click methodology. The absence of such a mouse from these handheld wireless communication devices, however, has necessitated that mouse substitutes be developed for navigational purposes. Mouse-type functionalities are needed for navigating and selecting screen icons, for navigating and selecting menu choices in “drop down” type menus and also for just moving a “pointer” type cursor across the display screen.
Today, such mouse substitutes take the form of rotatable thumb wheels, joysticks, touchpads, four-way cursors and the like. In the present description, a trackball is also disclosed as a screen navigational tool. It is known to provide navigation tools such as the rotatable thumb wheel with a ratchet-feeling affect that provides the user tactile feedback when rotating the navigation tool. This feedback provides the user with additional sensory information besides the induced visible motion on the display screen. In typical trackball assemblies, the trackball freely rotates within a receiving socket. Because of the many different directions within which freedom of movement is possible, it is much more difficult to affect a similar ratchet-feeling as provided in the thumb wheel which rotates about a fixed axis. The benefits of such ratchet type, incremental feed back is, however, still desired for trackball implementations whether it be of a tactile nature, or otherwise.
In one such available but not optimal implementation, the handheld electronic device makes use of a navigation tool in combination with a piezoelectric buzzer that provides audible user feedback. The piezoelectric buzzer does provide audible feedback upon actuation of the navigation tool, but it is limited in the types and variety of sounds it is capable of outputting.
Therefore, a need has been recognized for a navigation tool in a handheld electronic device that provides audible feedback to the user regarding the user's request for movement of a cursor on a display screen of the electronic device, via the navigation tool.